Something interesting happened to me on Christmas Day. I opened up the Goodreads page for my book Plastic Wings and found that I’d received my first one-star review. Given I’ve only received positive feedback since publishing, I wanted to know what I did wrong, if my book was problematic, and what I could think about doing differently in writing the sequel.

Interestingly enough, I found that the one-star review was from a quite popular, traditionally published author who hadn’t purchased my book (I run my own book sales, so I know how many people and exactly who the book has been sold to). I’ve never spoken to this author before in my life, and really, the only thing connecting my book to her was the fact that I’d written a blog post about a week prior listing books that attempt to be inclusive but are really more damaging than not. Go figure.

I bought the book a while back and was super excited to read it until I was informed that it was problematic by a friend and trusted blogger. While I was gravely disappointed about it, I already owned the book so I was planning on reading it anyway. Never mind.

When I originally planned out this post, I was going to keep her identity a secret because it felt rude to announce it. I’ve changed my mind for several reasons: